Nine nominees make up the final shortlist for this year’s Kate Granger Compassionate Care Awards and three of these nominations are for exceptional services provided in London.

The nominations in the capital are the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital whose staff have developed a toy MRI scanner to help put children at their ease; the Pathway group that has developed care for homeless people; and the North Kensington and Chelsea Home Treatment Team from Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust.

The finalists were selected from the record number of 130 entrants in the three award categories – up on the 97 received in 2015.

Now in their third year the awards were set up by Kate Granger, the terminally ill doctor who worked tirelessly to raise awareness around compassion in the NHS through her #hellomynameis social media campaign.

Together with her close friend and colleague Dr Natalie Silvey, a National Medical Director’s Fellow with NHS England, Kate chose the nine finalists for this year’s awards shortly before she died on 23 July from a rare type of sarcoma.

Kate’s husband of 12 years, Chris Pointon, will take Kate’s place at the awards at the Health and Care Innovation Expo being staged at Manchester Central on September 7 and 8.

He said: “There are some amazing entrants and deciding the shortlist was extremely difficult. The number of nominees shows just how highly regarded these awards have become and Kate was very proud of her legacy to the NHS.”

Before her death at the age of 34, Kate said she hoped the awards would continue and grow into an even bigger event, saying: “Being a patient has taught me a huge amount about being a doctor. Prioritising compassionate care in its rightful place alongside patient safety, under the umbrella of quality is perhaps one of the most important things I have learned.”

The shortlist is made up of three nominees in each of the three award categories.

The first award is for an individual working in the NHS or delivering NHS funded services. The others are for teams or organisations who are part of the NHS, or who deliver NHS funded services. These services can be delivered in hospitals, or in a primary care, community or residential setting.

Those shortlisted have all demonstrated how they have made a fantastic difference to patient care and, in particular, shown evidence of:

• an ambitious and innovative way of delivering care
• high-quality management and leadership
• an approach that can be easily measured and have a real impact
• how the approach has made a difference to patient care
• how it makes a difference in the long term
• how easily it can be replicated in other organisations

It was while undergoing treatment for cancer that Kate started writing about seeing the NHS “through the eyes of a patient”. She launched #hellomynameis campaign to talk about some of her intensely moving experiences. The campaign reminds health care professionals of the importance of introducing themselves to patients and how a relatively ‘little thing’ can positively affect a patient’s experience of the treatment and care they receive. It is now backed by more than 100 health trusts.

This year’s Kate Granger Awards ceremony is sponsored by HIMSS UK, a leader of transformation across health and care services using health IT.  Through its communities, analytics, media and events, HIMSS provides multiple platforms to provide health and care professionals with the rights tools and knowledge to deliver improved patient outcomes and efficiencies using technology.

For updates on Twitter follow #KGAwards16 and #Expo16NHS

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Background information

Team Award Nominees:

Nominee: Zoe Keates and Yoryd Khatri – Toy MRI Scanner – from the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital, Stanmore, Middlesex.
Nominated by:  Mr Matthew Shaw

A growing proportion of children seen at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital are happy and confident to have MRI scans without general anaesthetic, thanks to a compassionate play specialist and a clinical engineer who have harnessed the latest in technology to help put youngsters at their ease.

Zoe Keates, senior play specialist, has been working over the past two years with clinical engineering team leader Yoryd Khatri. Together, they have designed and produced a 3D printed MRI scanner which has a moveable table, real MRI sounds, a remote control and it represents how and what happens during a real MRI scan.

Many consultants still immediately decide that children under a certain age won’t be able to stay still and therefore put them on the list for a general anaesthetic without allowing the child to try first. But encouraging children to have their MRI scans awake removes the risks associated with an anaesthetic, reduces anxiety and means they can go straight home afterwards, rather than returning to the ward for recovery.

The play specialists are now starting to take referrals from consultants when they request MRI scans for their paediatric patients, and children as young as four have undergone successful MRI without general anaesthetic.

The families’ anxieties around hospitals and treatments are dramatically reduced, and the whole hospital experience for children becomes less daunting and scary, both at the time and for any future scans and treatments.

When they have the opportunity to choose, children regularly opt to have their scans awake. The play scanner is also very useful post-procedurally because it helps children understand and process what they have had done and it helps them to understand their conditions.

The parent of a 7-year-old child said: “My daughter said she liked the toy scanner because she could see the movement it makes when someone is in the real MRI Scanner and I think it is a good idea for the children to play with the toy scan before they go to the real scan.”

Another mum added: “It’s brilliant. So helpful to explain to William what was going to happen,” while an 8-year-old patient said: “I think it’s good for children who are scared about having a MRI scan, and its a good size for dolls.”

Mr Matthew Shaw, Medical Director and Deputy CEO at RNOH, said: “Zoe and Yoryd demonstrated innovation and leadership by developing this MRI model tool. They have worked extremely hard over the last two years to produce a quite excellent and professionally developed clinical tool.”

A colleague in the X-Ray department enthused: “I think it’s excellent: a very true impression of an MRI scanner and will hopefully save us some money and prevent little ones from going under GA unnecessarily. Well done to all who took part in creating it.”

Another added: “It’s an amazing idea, and a way for children to look closely at the scanner and have a feel of what it does. This would encourage children to at least try and go through with a scan without a GA and that would help us.”

Pathway

In 2008 a homeless man died outside a London hospital and Pathway was formed to make sure it never happened again.

Pathway began in London but has achieved a revolution in care and compassion across the country, helping to establish 11 hospital teams, supporting over 3,000 people a year.

Pathway teams bring together the NHS, the voluntary sector, statutory services and private service providers. Teams include specially trained doctors and nurses, occupational therapists, solicitors, mental health practitioners, housing and benefits advisors, and social workers, who together make an emergency hospital admission an opportunity to change the course of a homeless person’s life.

All Pathway services are informed by ‘Experts by Experience’ – people who have been homeless and had health problems. These experts also formally review and help specialist homeless GP practices improve their support of homeless patients. Pathway Care Navigators were once homeless but undertake the apprenticeship programme and qualifications to work in the GP-led hospital teams.

Many homeless patients’ lack of address leaves them excluded from vital services like longer term access to mental health services, Occupational Therapy and drug and alcohol support. Pathway teams make sure workable arrangements for follow up are in place before a patient is discharged, and some have even developed respite services: specialist medically-supported short stay beds in the community, reducing hospital bed days while ensuring patients are supported in their recovery.

Pathway teams are now largely funded by the CCGs after a wide range of start-up funding from charitable sources. Working with CCGs, Pathway has brokered access to primary care IT systems in hospitals, allowing teams to track often transitory patients’ vital medical history to inform their acute care.

Homeless patients have high levels of readmission: in the worst cases patients are unable to maintain medication regimes or keep surgical wounds or stitches clean, leading to mental health deterioration, sepsis, emergency readmission and even death. Physicians, frustrated by repeat admissions, did not always provide the kindest care, and homeless patients often respond by self-discharging

Pathway breaks this cycle, treating each patient with understanding and compassion, helping them to identify their goals and using the wide range of skills across the team to help them get the right ongoing support.

Teams also educate clinicians to identify and support homeless patients, with over 500 doctors, nurses and medical students trained each year. The Experts by Experience share their stories as part of this training to help future doctors understand that their compassion can be as important as their medicine for homeless patients.

Pathway is now working with a leading London university to found a post-graduate, interdisciplinary qualification for homeless health professionals, and has guided 12 hospitals through the implementation of the model.

Its core purpose is to develop approaches that can be replicated, share learning between teams, and support other organisations to adopt the improved approaches that emerge. The most recent is in Perth, Australia, where a new team have adapted our cross organisational approach to respond to health needs of a large homeless population accessing their hospital including many patients from Aboriginal communities.

Philip Brading, Chief Executive of UCLH Charity, said: “UCLH Charity is delighted to have played its part in incubating Pathway. It is thanks to the dedication and perseverance of the clinical teams that this approach to improving care for the most disadvantaged is now spreading nationwide. I know the individual stories of compassionate care and recovery have inspired colleagues across the NHS.”

Nominee: Home Treatment Team North Kensington – CNWL Foundation Trust
Nominated by:  Harriet Mitchell (Note: we are not using her real name to protect patient confidentiality)

Harriet Mitchell who nominated this team has a complex and severe bipolar disorder and regularly requires crisis care. She says the Home Treatment Team North Kensington go far above the level of care she hears about from service users in other areas.

The team is currently supporting Harriet through regular discussions with her named consultant, monitoring to assess her need for hospital admission, closely working with pharmacists to manage her symptoms during medication changes, and providing daily visits from nurses or junior doctors.

She is also offered additional phone calls or visits if required and supported to attend therapy, with the large nursing team working hard to ensure she sees the same people who have established a relationship with her.

There are various levels of staff within the team, including a consultant and junior grade doctors, nurses and senior nurses, who adopt a multi-disciplinary approach.

Harriet explained: “The team allows me to feel caught when I feel that I am falling, but is also aware of its limits, facilitating my admission to hospital earlier this year when it was clear that neither I, nor they, could ensure my safety.

“Most of the nurses are skilled listeners, and all are compassionate. Talking to them allows me to say things that may be unsayable at home. My often very detailed suicide plans are treated neither with shock or horror, nor a blasé belief that I’ll be okay. The team strike a middle way of taking me seriously without escalating tension through their own anxiety.

“I know of service users whose crisis team do not offer face-to- face appointments, who only offer medication as a treatment option, or who offer inadequate “distraction” advice, such as to have a bath or make a hot drink. When I hear about other peoples’ experiences I realise how incredibly lucky I am. I feel I’m taken seriously.”

The team involves Harriet’s husband in major decision making and medication management, so he attends meetings and can play a key role in the team caring for her. She says the team have managed her illness in the community some half a dozen times with admission being the result on only one occasion.

Harriet’s husband added: “Without them, my wife would have spent a lot more time in hospital rather than one admission in five years of continuous illness. If the team wasn’t there she would struggle to manage in the community and more admissions would be inevitable.”

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